James R. Mirick sets the record straight on things he cares about

Watching the Republicans Self-Destruct

Well, the President may have SAID that his party “got whupped” in the election, but if that statement contained any meaning to him, he and the party have not as we would say, “fully internalized it.” With the electorate up in arms over gross corporate tax breaks and corruption, with their syncophant lobbysts going to jail in droves (for example, Jack Abramoff and others), and a number of House Members and Senators the target of ethics investigations, and with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman stating, “we rely too much on white guys for our vote,” the party elects to their key leadership positions two highly tainted — white — southern — men. You gotta ask: what are these guys smoking? Why take on all this baggage when they could as easily choose people who would at least give a fresh, unsullied face to the party?

Lets start with the Senate. Sliming his way back to Washington from the swamps of Mississippi comes — you guessed it, Trent Lott. Huh? Yes, THAT Trent Lott, who used to be the majority leader in the Senate until his 2002 speech in which he stated that “if only Strom Thurmond had been elected President in 1948, things would be a lot better now.” For those of you too young to remember, Strom Thurmond was a racist southern senator who ran for President on the Dixiecrat ticket because he thought Harry Truman was a leftist patsy. He almost won. So here we have old Trent, who pines for the days when black people could be referred to in public as “niggers” and “coons” and their children as “chocolate drops,” and thinks this sort of thing would be an improvement on the world today. Trent Lott, friends, is the new Minority Whip of the Senate — not the leader of the minority party, granted, but its enforcer. So sad to see the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, come to this.

Moving onward to the House, the slime trail leads to Roy Blunt of Missouri, now the Minority Whip of the House. Where other Republicans may have a taste for Congressional pages, or for overlooking other Members’ taste in pages, Roy Blunt is interested in one thing: money. He is a pure disciple of Tom DeLay, and no one has done more to turn the Republican Party, through its control of the White House and Congress, into a fountain of literally billions of dollars of corporate tax breaks, lobbying payments, PAC contributions, and fire-hoses of insider influence. As the Abramoff et.al. scandals continue to unfold, look for Roy Blunt’s fingerprints all over them — which makes his elevation to this post such a total mystery.

So rather than listening to the mood of the country and learning, the Republicans have voted a resounding “aye!” to continuine business-as-usual: all the things that have revolted the electorate and kept the Ethics Committee and occasionally the Federal Courts busy over the last several years.